When the book arrived through the post, it was as if it were my birthday – the book is unusually large (almost A3 sized), beautifully printed on heavy glossy paper, and (hooray!) it doesn’t have a dust jacket (One of my pet peeves when it comes to kids’ books is the issue of dust jackets – in our house books are to be read, and played with, and taken to bed, and even used sometimes as building material. They are not going to sit quietly on a shelf collecting dust from which they need to be protected.)

All this added up to the book feeling like a solid present, a real gift, and that was before I had even opened it and read it with the family. And yet things did get even better when we sat down with this irreverent but informative quirky story of 365 Penguins…

New Year’s Day sees the arrival, at a family home, of an anonymous parcel containing a single penguin. Each day (for what turns out to be a whole year) another parcel arrives, and with each parcel new problems accrue. At first the problems are not so serious (what names should the family give the penguins?), but as the number of penguins rises, the family’s problems multiply. There are storage issues, there is the cost of feeding the animals and the noise, to say nothing of the smell. There are penguins every where!

When the year of penguin parcels is up, it transpires that they have been sent to the family in a (rather misguided) attempt to save them from dying out through loss of habitat – the family’s Uncle is an ecologist and…

As you know, the planet is heating up. The ice caps are melting. Year after year, these lovely birds of the South Pole see their territory get smaller and smaller. To increase their chances of survival, I decided to introduce them to the North Pole. But unfortunately, you can’t export endangered species. So I found an expensive but secret way: sending one penguin a day to your family during one year.

Uncle Victor is then seen leaving with all but one of the penguins, much to the family’s relief. It would seem that the family’s problems are all over …but then the next day the postman arrives at the family’s front door with a much larger parcel…

This absurd, over-the-top story made all of us giggle and laugh. It also made us stop and think – not only is the book full of opportunities to learn or practise all sorts of mathematical concepts (the number of days in a week/month/year, addition, multiplication, 3 dimensional shapes to name but a few), it also led to a discussion about animal habitats and climate change. Serious issues along side a serious dose of silliness and fun – what a great combination!

As well as having a meaty story to chew over, this book is delicious because of the amazingly zingy illustrations. The limited palette (black, white, grey, orange and brown), along with the rather stylized illustrations gives this book a fresh yet retro feel – it reminded me of some Bernice Myers books, such as Gravity All Around. The size of the book makes it difficult to read with only one free hand, or in bed, but actually the larger than life format of this book matches its contents perfectly.

One of the big problems the family faces when inundated with all these penguins is how to store them. They try stacking them, then they file them away in boxes of a dozen, then they build a cube out of them – and these storage solutions provided us with a great opportunity to craft and play.

First we made quite a lot of penguins (not quite 365, but still rather a lot) out of polystyrene cups. We painted them (we had to use acrylic paint as our regular poster paint wouldn’t stick to the cups), stuck on googly eyes and orange beaks. As we’re still having lots of grey days here, we opted for colourful, if atypical looking, penguins.

Once our penguins were ready to march we tried our hand at storing them every which way.

M and I had a lot of fun adding, subtracting and counting our penguins, plus lots of practice at concentrated placing of the penguins to build up our stacks.

This is still one of William’s favorite books, despite the fact that he’s moved on to chapter books. I love the retro look, he loves the story. He also loves contemplating the arrival of polar bears each day.

For another nice penguin book, have you seen A PENGUIN STORY by Antoinette Portis (author of NOT A BOX)?

Oh my goodness – I love the book & the craft is awesome! What a great way to learn addition & subtraction! 1st time visiting your blog, I am subscribing to your blog! Looking forward to seeing your ideas!

I am visiting your blog from StArt and blown away This post is so informative, and I am amazed that you could create so many penguins. I am definitely going to subscribe from now on and look for the book as well.

omg, I’m going to have to track down this book – just what I love, who cares what my children think.
My son is enjoying Uno’s Garden by Graeme Base which has a similar environmental thems to 365 Penguins and also a maths element.

So many colorful penguins! It must have taken a while to make them but they do look like fun to stack. The book reminds me a little of Mr. Poppin’s Penguins…family ends up taking care of penguins in their home plot.

Zoe

Catherine and Janelle – Thanks for your book tips. I look forward to finding the books!

Julie and Natalie – yeah, quite a lot of penguins! But with a little assembly line of 3 it didn’t take too long. I have to say having all the different colours helped keep the girls interested. If all they had been painting was black I don’t think we’d have managed to make as many!

The cup penguins are great! We love 365 Penguins, especially little Chilly If you haven’t read Penguin Story by Antoinette Portis, you should check it out. We love all her books. Orange Pear Apple Bear by Emily Gravett and Night Rabbits by Monica Wellington are current favorites here.

I just wanted to stop by and let you know that I just did this craft at the library I work at with my preschool craft program. They went *crazy!* They loved it so much, and the parents asked me to thank you for such a wonderful craft tied-in to the book. So, thanks a lot!

[…] that loves to encourage others to get stuck in. I “met” her via this post on making Penguin stacks to go with the book 365 Penguins. I love it! It is a super easy project that anyone can make.. if […]

[…] ‘Penguin Bowling Game’ looks ideal for developing quick mental maths skills. The other site, playingbythebook.net, had reviewed 365 Penguins and wrote about the spin off family activities that ensued. I […]

[…] that loves to encourage others to get stuck in. I “met” her via this post on making Penguin stacks to go with the book 365 Penguins. I love it! It is a super easy project that anyone can make.. if […]